Welcome students

Welcome to the (2011) Walk-The-Talk blog. This blog has been set up for graduate students participating in the MBA program at CCU. You are invited to join this ongoing “Action Learning” discussion to share your personal viewpoint and real-life experience of business in America. Some questions to consider; How did we get here? Where do we go from here?

This blog is an “open” public space for knowledge sharing and Spirit learning. The posts are monitored and so you will need to register and set up an account. When you register, please use a nickname, not your real name. You must use a current “active” email address and once your initial post has been approved by the system admin, me, you will be able to make additional posts without delay. If you would like to become a walk-the-talk contributing editor and have posting/editing privileges, just shoot me an email and I’ll be pleased to set you up. In the meantime, enjoy blogging.

In His service,

Comments:
akunoviFebruary 13th, 2010 at 4:11 pm

The topic of discussion reminds me of the words of Jesus in Mathew 20:26-28 “….. but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many”. Cleary Jesus preached and practiced servant leadership. These days most people will rather be served than serve.

Service leadership is rarely seen in my country, and since I have not worked in this country (US), I would like to refer to what I have seen in Ghana, where leaders give up nothing when they come into leadership position, but are in for their own personal gain. The ‘golden parachute’ leader is seen in our government as well as in cooperate leadership. You will hardly see the type of service leadership that Northouse described where leaders are attentive to the concerns of their followers, empathized with them and take care of or nurture followers (p. 348), in my country.

CurlytopFebruary 11th, 2011 at 7:29 am

It does not appear that things are increasing that much in the corporate world. What does appear to be happening, is that long time issues from established firms are being exposed or those there financial transgressions are catching up to them. None of these places are dealing with new issues that just came up.

While there have always been issues of morals, values and ethics. We live in a fallen world. There is greed and deception out there and it lives among us. (Corporations and all business alike are run by people. Those people make choices. They may not make the choices we agree with, but they do.) I also know that there is a large amount of good. Corporate America is touched by it as well. The media fills our ears with scandal, at a frenzied level, in corporations and business in the United States. What once was a scandal is now a catastrophe for the world to see, to blog about and to panic over. (Of course, Enron was a very exceptional story due to the money that so many people lost in the public.) These exposures to the “bad eggs” make all of corporate America look bad.

When we think about it objectively, we find only a few places that are going through “scandals” out of the countless corporations out there. Perhaps I am looking for the good in the world. However, when I have been looking at the research online with corruption in corporate America, there are several bad corporations that have been through investigations and/or are under investigation. When I look at corporate America as a whole, the number of honest corporations still operating without issues reduces those others to mere fractions. Perhaps this is the wrong answer for this case study, but this is what I am finding in my own research. Of course, corruption will continue to happen, even will all of the fail-safe that will be put into place following the scandals. Other scandals will still be found that have been happening for years, long time issues yet to be exposed. . On the whole, most corporations and organizations, along with the employees in them are trying to make an honest living.

Leadership of the Past Decade, Service vs Golden Parachute Leadership (Scripture Reference Luke 9:23-24)
I found it astonishing that when I did a Google search with the simple phrase entry “Leaders of the Last Decade” the first article referencing “world” leaders showed pictures of a group of people who proved to be tyrants, dictators or inept in the opinion of many.
On the world stage at least, leadership styles did not seem to exemplify the “sacrifice of self” model as portrayed in the scripture where Christ said to deny self and follow Him. Although this particular article seemed a little “tongue in cheek,” I pondered the idea of George Bush as described by Lee Iacocca and derived that he wasn’t the only one who felt that Bush’s leadership style was one that exhibited an “I am always right” mentality. Iacocca’s point was that in setting aside his own ideals or “instincts” at the time, seemingly would have been a better expression of leadership than to put a whole nation and mother’s son’s and daughters at risk and in harms way. Iacocca’s rant seemed more directed at his abhorrence with any leader who would choose to serve what could have been viewed by many as a personal agenda. Looking back over the list of “world” leaders in the past decade, which included names like Castro, Putin, and Gaddafi I share in a view that these types of individuals just didn’t ring true as examples of an exemplary notion of servanthood leadership or a denial of self for the greater good.

When it comes to a question of service leadership vs golden parachute, I believe that service leadership is the most effective style. Of course Jesus was the ultimate example of a Servant leader, but a more modern day example would be someone like Joyce Meyer who I notice does a world outreach ministry that exemplifies moving self out of the way and extending a hand to others in the true since of the referenced scripture. The golden parachute was developed, in my opinion, to protect the top tier of management and to guarantee the ability to walk away from a poorly managed situation with the ability to maintain a lifestyle in to which the individual had become accustomed with little or no regard for the persons that would remain and be left to suffer the consequences rendered by their often poor decision making.

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